The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the coronavirus will not be the latest pandemic and recalled that health advances will be insufficient if there are no changes regarding global warming and animal welfare.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of “the danger of short-term behavior,” in a video message recorded for Sunday’s commemoration of the first International Day of Epidemic Preparedness.
“History shows us that it will not be the last pandemic,” he stated and argued that good lessons need to be learned from the coronavirus pandemic.
“For a long time, the world acted in the midst of a cycle of panic and denial,” he assured.
“We spend money when the crisis erupts, but when it ends, we forget and do nothing to prevent the next one. It is the danger of short-term behaviors,” lamented the director general of this UN agency.
The first Annual Report on Global Preparedness for Health Emergencies, published in September 2019, already warned of humanity’s poor preparedness for major pandemics, just months before the covid-19 crisis began.
“The pandemic revealed the close links between the health of people, animals and the planet,” he said.
“All efforts to improve health systems will be insufficient if they are not accompanied by a critique of the relationship between humans and animals, as well as the existential threat posed by climate change, which is turning the Earth into a harder place to live “.
The new coronavirus caused at least 1.75 million deaths and infected 80 million people worldwide after the first cases were detected in China in December 2019, according to the count conducted by AFP through official data.